Medusa

by Jessie Burton

I’d never known a change that wasn’t monstrous. And here was another truth: I was lonely and I was angry, and rage and loneliness can end up tasting the same.

But seeing as I’ve been accused of vanity enough times by people who nevertheless thought it their right to ogle me, I might as well tell you: my hair was lovely.

She was a woman who’d done nothing wrong except exist.”

I could taste Danaë’s loneliness because it tasted exactly the same as mine.

“Zeus noticed her.” Like Poseidon noticed me.

“I wasn’t there, Merina,” Perseus said, sounding prickly. “It didn’t happen to me.” “It would never happen to you,” I said.

“And so, like so many women before and since, she was forced into a corner and she made the timeless bargain?”

“Well, I think it’s easier being told you’re a handsome boy than it is to be told you’re a beautiful girl. When beauty’s assigned you as a girl, it somehow becomes the essence of your being. It takes over everything else you might be. When you’re a boy, it never dominates who you can be.”

when you’re a girl, people think your beauty is their possession. As if it’s there for their pleasure, as if they’ve got something invested in it. They think you owe them for their admiration.

You see, remembering’s a blessing and a curse. You can’t erase your bad memories, but a life without regrets is a life unlived.

No woman is an island—unless she’s been forced there by a bunch of strangers.

I had my snakes and I had my dignity, and I realized, for the first time, that I could not tell the difference.